 /*******************************************************************************
  * Copyright (c) 2000, 2005 IBM Corporation and others.
  * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
  * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
  * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
  * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
  *
  * Contributors:
  * IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
  *******************************************************************************/
 package org.eclipse.core.internal.dtree;

 import java.io.*;
 import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IPath;

 /**
  * The <code>IElementInfoFlattener</code> interface supports
  * reading and writing element info objects.
  */
 public interface IDataFlattener {
     /**
      * Reads a data object from the given input stream.
      * @param path the path of the element to be read
      * @param input the stream from which the element info should be read.
      * @return the object associated with the given path,
      * which may be <code>null</code>.
      */
     public Object readData(IPath path, DataInput input) throws IOException;

     /**
      * Writes the given data to the output stream.
      * <p> N.B. The bytes written must be sufficient for the
      * purposes of reading the object back in.
      * @param path the element's path in the tree
      * @param data the object associated with the given path,
      * which may be <code>null</code>.
      */
     public void writeData(IPath path, Object data, DataOutput output) throws IOException;
 }

